Barangaroo Reserve

Barangaroo Reserve, at the northern end of the Barangaroo Precinct, has transformed the one kilometre hardstand apron that was once part of Sydney's industrial harbour into a new, though artificial headland. US-based Peter Walker and Partners Landscape Architecture (PWP), in association with Sydney's Johnson Pilton Walker, Architects and Landscape Architects, brought this design exercise together and helped to resolve some of the vastly convergent issues that Barangaroo inspired, both politically and in planning and design terms. In 2005, the NSW state government launched the East Darling Harbour International Urban Design Competition for the transformation of the Barangaroo Precinct. The winner, announced in 2006, was the team comprised of Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects, Paul Berkemeier Architect and Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture. The proposal interpreted the site "as a series of urban projects that reunite the city with its harbour, including a collection of strategic urban linkages and the creation of a new finely calibrated and adaptable urban grain. The proposal enshrines the western foreshore as an inalienable public place belonging to the citizens of Sydney." Congratulating Jane Irwin at the time for her part in the winning team, I acknowledged the thrill it must have been to be so identified.

Soon after, the concept of a "headland park" was conceived and later adopted, leading to a great disappointment for the then-winning team. It was promoted by former prime minister Paul Keating, who pursued (somewhat determinedly) the new concept of a headland parkland in the middle of Sydney Harbour.